Somersaults.

When Milo was little — less and less often as he grew up — he used to substitute words to amusing effect.  Milopropisms, we called them (apologies to R. B. Sheridan).  Once he turned a somersault for the first time, popped up and declared proudly, "I did a spring roll!"

Spring rolls or somersaults, there are a lot of them going on around here.  Mostly in my lower abdomen.  I remember Hannah telling me that one of the weirdest sensations she ever felt was her second son, Silas, doing a front somersault turning from breech to vertex in very late pregnancy.  I couldn't even imagine that.  But after a couple of days of on-and-off, irregular, painless, but very noticeable and tiring contractions, I woke up in the middle of the night and went "GAAAAHHH!" I had the mental image of the baby standing up inside me and tenting my abdomen with his HEAD.  I put my hand on my belly and felt something with corners poking up, and then it slid away downward under my hand and sort of went plop.

My heart was kind of pounding when it was done, it was such a horribly fascinatingly weird sensation.  

And then about forty-five minutes later it happened AGAIN.

And again not long after I woke up.

And a few more not-quite-so-amazingly-huge rolling movements since I've been up and around.

I have no idea which end of the baby is up now.  I've never been very good at figuring that out.  Clearly there's still some room for that to change.  (35 weeks today)

Impressive.  The two days of contractions were starting to get on my nerves, and I had already started pounding the glasses of water just in case they were due to dehydration or something, although I had the distinct feeling that they were normal sort of preparatory practice contractions.  Whatever — I realize that proximity doesn't necessarily imply causation here, but it's hard not to conclude that they had something to do with a major repositioning that appears not to be quite complete.  My belly had felt compact and firm and stuffed full; now, everything feels very soft and loose and yielding, as if my uterus has softened and stretched and made a little more room for the baby to move.  Maybe he's dropped a bit.